Fauré Requiem

Saturday, 22 January 2011, 19:30
Royal Festival Hall, London

Sally Matthews (soprano)
Gerald Finley (bass-baritone)
London Philharmonic Choir
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

This concert was recorded for broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on Wednesday 26 January at 7:00pm and will be available to hear again on the BBC iplayer for 7 days. Click logo…

Gabriel Urbain Fauré: Requiem
César Franck: Symphony in D minor

What the critics say

Bob Briggs, Musicweb International (Seen & Heard UK)

Here is a programme which might not seem to be overly interesting, on paper, but which, in reality, proved to be a real winner. César Franck’s Symphony is a superb work, much under rated, and not performed as often as its stature demands it should be. Tonight Nézet–Séguin directed a performance which treated it as the big, bold, romantic work it so obviously is. Without a strong grip on the ebb and flow of the music, the first movement, which moves between a slow and a fast tempo, can appear to have too loose a structure, but there was none of that here. Nézet–Séguin wove a brilliant tapestry of sound, as he drew together the two different musics into one very convincing whole. This was masterly, and emotionally draining. It was exactly right! The slow movement brought some respite, with beautiful cor anglais playing from Sue Bohling, but the start was spoiled by poor ensemble between the harp and the pizzicato strings. The finale was a real run with the wolves, the music rushing forwards towards a devastating conclusion, of great power and intensity. The French tradition – yes, I know Franck was Belgian by birth, but he was a Frenchman by adoption – has few symphonies so we should cherish this work all the more as an example of the path less well trodden in that country. Nézet–Séguin and the London Philharmonic did Franck proud, and for that the packed audience was truly grateful.

Fauré’s Requiem has suffered from performances which treat it as a delightful little work, which barely touches the surface of the subject – a Mass for the Dead. Tonight, with a very large choir, Nézet–Séguin gave a reading which pushed all those feelings aside and showed the work to be a deeply felt and most moving experience, a work full of drama, tension and deep emotion. Gerald Finley was excellent in his two solos, devotional in the Hostias, and firm, but never overtly forthright, in the Libera Me. I would have preferred a boy treble in the Pie Jesu for the clear, chaste lines demand a very pure sound, which, I am afraid, a mature female voice simply cannot provide. A couple of years ago I heard Sally Matthews give a stunning performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations with this orchestra – it was subsequently issued on the LPO’s own label, LPO-0037, which is well worth having – and I was impressed. Tonight, however, she sang with an exaggerated vibrato which spoiled the line of the music and sometimes one couldn’t be sure of what note she was delivering. The chorus was superb, and it was one of the high points of the performance to hear such a large group of voices in this music; it was quite at home in both the meditative and more disturbing sections of the score. In general this was a very fine show, with performances and interpretations of the highest order.

BBC Radio 3 recorded the show for broadcast on Wednesday 26 January, and it will be available for seven days thereafter on the BBC iPLayer, and it should not be missed.

Ivan Hewitt, The Telegraph, 24 January 2011

Rating 4 stars

Only two works were played in this concert and there were tender and delicately moulded performances of each.

Concerts tend to be bitty experiences, with each piece whisking the listener out of one world of feeling into another. Last Saturday the LPO offered us the rare pleasure of a concert that actually stayed in one place.

The place was the plush, perfumed world of late 19th century France. There were just two works, Cesar Franck’s D minor Symphony and Fauré’s Requiem. Only a year separated their premieres in Paris, and they have much in common. There’s a definite smell of the sacristy, which I was ready for in Faure’s Requiem. But it’s there too in Franck’s symphony, which has an aspiring ’faith theme’ at its high point. Another unexpected resonance was a grave neo-classical stateliness, as if the spirit of French Renaissance music had passed over both pieces.

These illuminating parellels might not have registered, if the performances hadn’t been so tender and delicately moulded. Franck’s symphony fell out of fashion decades ago, and my dim memory of the piece was of something grandiose and turgid. Under the flexible and sympathetic baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin it was neither. True, Franck’s orchestral sound has that thick impasto you often get with organist composers (they just can’t resist pulling out one more stop, so to speak), but the LPO and Nézet-Séguin made it translucent and eloquent. The symphony’s narrative seems complex on the page, with lots of flash-backs and dramatic disguises (such as stately themes reappearing in martial dress), but in this glowing performance it all cohered, and the joy of the final movement felt absolutely right and unforced.

Fauré’s Requiem seems less of a challenge, in the sense that it hardly ever strays from a tone of seraphic peace. In fact the piece needs enormous care if its sweetness isn’t to turn sickly, and this performance certainly gave a sense of being beautifully honed in every detail. The London Philharmonic Choir made a focused, rapt sound in the Offertoire and the closing In Paradisum, but they were vigorous and forthright in the Sanctus – and how well Nézet-Séguin and the orchestra supported them, bringing a welcome airy lightness into the musical fabric. Soprano Sally Matthews proved that a ripe soprano sound is every bit as apt for Pie Jesu as a boy’s voice, and baritone Gerald Finley was tellingly understated. It was a pleasure to hear something so hackneyed restored to its true colours.